Emma Cox

My transdisciplinary research examines public cultures of social justice and reparative action across the performing and visual arts, as well as in humanitarianism, medical culture, and forensic activism. My work has been published in peer-reviewed journals including Medical Humanities (British Medical Journal), Theatre Journal, and Theatre Research International. My books include Performing Noncitizenship (2015), Theatre & Migration (2014), and the play collection Staging Asylum (2013). I am co-editor with Sam Durrant, David Farrier, Lyndsey Stonebridge and Agnes Woolley of the major interdisciplinary volume, Refugee Imaginaries: Research Across the Humanities (2020), and contributing editor of Performance and Migration (2021), a video and publishing collaboration between Digital Theatre+ and Routledge, featuring content by scholars and artists.

I was Head of Department of Drama, Theatre and Dance at Royal Holloway from 2021-2024 and am currently Co-Chair (with Georgina Guy and Lennox Goddard) of TaPRA, the Theatre and Performance Research Association (UK).

Forthcoming books include Reparative Acts: The Work of Biological Remains in Artistic, Commemorative, and Medical Culture and Affiliate Bodies: Procession, Migration, Land, Sanctuary. I am currently editing the interdisciplinary collection, Migrations, Populations & Technologies, part of a multi-volume series, Politismós, Civilization, Sanskriti and Wenming, led by Ganesh Devy.

I welcome doctoral students and cross-disciplinary collaboration across a range of areas and in projects concerning arts, rights, and justice, particularly forced migration, forensic humanitarianism, racialisation, and medical cultures.